Government Using NSA to Change Amount in Bank Accounts, Warns Panel Americans at risk of enforced Cyprus-style bail-in

A White House review panel report into
the activities of the NSA suggested that the government was using the
spy agency to launch cyber attacks against financial institutions and
change the amounts held in bank accounts.

The 300 page report prepared for President
Barack Obama by the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications
Technology called for the NSA to be stripped of its power to obtain
bulk collections of telephone records.

Page 221 of the panel's report states;

(1) Governments should not use surveillance
to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry;

(2) Governments should not use their
offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial
accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems.

Trevor Timm from the Electronic Frontier
Foundation responded to the report by suggesting that the NSA was targeting
major financial institutions.

In the aftermath of the Edward
Snowden revelations it
was confirmed that, "The National Security Agency (NSA) widely
monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions,"
under the auspices of an international branch called Follow the Money
(FTM), and that the spy agency has full access to the VISA and SWIFT
payment systems.

"Top financial experts say that
the NSA and other intelligence agencies are using information gained
from spying to profit from this inside information. And the NSA wants
to ramp up its spying on Wall Street … to “protect”
it. "Whose money, exactly, is the NSA “protecting”
… and how are they protecting it?" asks
Washington's Blog, "What about the money of people that the
U.S. government considers undesirables?"

The government's ability to use the
NSA to directly amend bank accounts increases the risk of Americans
being subjected to a Cyprus-style "bail-in" where a tax on
savings deposits is directly levied in the name of austerity.

Earlier this year, Chase
Bank customers attempted to withdraw their cash from ATMs only to
be shocked at seeing their balance reduced to zero by a mystery system
"glitch". Was this in any way connected to the NSA's activities?

With banks increasingly moving
towards capital controls in a bid to stave off the risk of a sudden
flight from the US dollar, the prospect of the US government relying
on cyber attacks launched by the NSA to manipulate financial markets
and bank accounts remains a genuine possibility.